Abandoned Briefcase Puts American Airlines Arena on Alert

Before the Miami Heat took to the court against the Washington Wizards
for the second round of NBA playoff games Sunday, officers with Miami's
bomb squad were creating some excitement of their own at
AmericanAirlines Arena.

Miami police gathered and geared up at around 9:30 a.m. Sirens blazed.

A large area was cordoned off with yellow police tape. Buses, taxis and
other vehicles leaving the Port of Miami-Dade were directed southbound
on Biscayne Boulevard. All the attention was focused on a gleaming
silver briefcase that sat suspiciously alone on a short, concrete column
near the arena entrance.

After inspecting it, a member of the bomb squad, clad in a 100-pound,
green-colored bomb suit, rigged the case with a special explosive
device.

Onlookers and arena employees watched from a safe distance at Bayside
Marketplace.

Boom!

In a smoky instant, the case was safely blown open.

It appeared to contain audio recording equipment, likely left by a news
reporter covering the 3:30 p.m. game, police said.

The ticket booth at the arena had not yet opened when Miami police
arrived at the scene. Some fans were already in line. Employees were
just trickling in.

"There really wasn't a whole lot of people in the building," arena
manager Alex Diaz said. "I think the evacuation was more of a
precaution." Traffic congestion created some noise as impatient drivers
honked their horns repeatedly. Security guard Eddy Johnson was heading
in to start his shift and watched the scene unfold from the Bayside
parking lot.

He said he and his colleagues were trained to look out for suspicious
packages, but the bomb squad in action provided an interesting
spectacle.

"This is exciting," Johnson said. "I've never seen anything like it
before."

Rafael Masferrer, a sergeant with the bomb squad, said such operations
have become routine since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The squad detonates between 14 and 17 abandoned packages a month,
Masferrer said.

On Saturday, the squad was called to the Rickenbacker Causeway to
destroy what Masferrer described as a car key wrapped with wires to look
like a bomb.

"It looked like some kind of hoax," he said.

Last week, the squad was outside a Starbucks on Miracle Mile dealing
with an abandoned gym bag. After police detonated the bag, men's
underwear and shaving cream littered the sidewalk.

Masferrer said police have no choice but to take such packages
seriously.

'It's not a matter of 'if' but 'when' one of these things turns out to
be dangerous," he said.